Naming and shaming
Dec. 8th, 2004 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHow do we name things? Naming Nature is an interesting BBC Radio 4 programme presented by the poet Ian McMillan. (McMillan also presents The Verb, a weekly 'cabaret of the word' on Radio 3. Along with Laurie Taylor, Radio 4's resident sociologist, I think he's the most distinctive radio voice of the post-Peel age.) The bit about the arbitrary Latin names for plants and animals made me laugh a lot.
Language represents the world, and therefore, like politicians, language inevitably betrays the world. Personally, I'm disturbed by labels, which always seem a kind of mini-betrayal. But I'm also disturbed when things don't have names. For instance, the male haircut (seen on a lot of contemporary dancers, for some reason) with 'something going on at the back' (no, not the mullet with 'a party at the back', I mean just some cute, fluffed, tufty stuff going on behind)? What do you call that? Or the baggy ass hipster jeans we've been seeing for the last couple of years, with their sagging, flat-bummed look, what are those called? I just saw a Wrangler poster featuring a pair, so I see they've made it into major manufacturers' lines. But the only word on the Wrangler poster was 'Wanted'. So tell me what you call these jeans? And how to describe my current look? Heimat Fisherman? Soldier Pierrot? Flip Spiv? When it comes to labels, I sometimes think 'the more the merrier'. That way we retain a bit of anarchy and stop any one label winning.
Browsing around clothes store Belleville the other day, I became totally absorbed in a photo book called Exactitudes. The book, by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, shows page after page of exaggeratedly conformist 'looks', each given a name and gridded twelve to a page. Ari and Ellie's aim was to point up the contradiction between individuality and uniformity by making 'an anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity'. Here are three 'Chairmen':
Here are three 'Musulmen':
Here are three 'Bonitas' (a familiar New York type):
Three 'Casual Queers':
And here are three of the only group I could find that seemed to include people who dressed like me: 'Vagabonds'!
One of the reasons I love regular features like Shift's Girls on the Street snaps is that it's so tempting to try to classify and generalize the looks on offer, and yet the attempt is doomed to failure. Looks are never as rigid as the 'Exactitudes' book makes them seem, and often, by the time you've found a word for a look, it's over. If naming and betrayal are closely related, naming can also be akin to killing. The most fascinating moment for a trend-spotter is somewhere between noticing a pattern emerging and knowing what to call it. As soon as a name is found and enters into common use, the look seems rubber-stamped, reproducible, conformist, commercial, ready to be flogged to death then filed away in some costume museum, ready for revival at some later date, primed for hybrids and irony.
Recently I've been enjoying another sort of street observation, more verbal than visual. Japan Today's regular Pop Vox feature (compiled by Sachie Kanda, it might as well be called 'Kanda Camera') links styles to opinions. Ordinary Japanese people are stopped on the street, photographed, and asked about topical issues. We get to see correlations between their looks and their views, between their objective presence in the world and their subjective reflections on it.
What strikes me is how sweet and sane, how tender and community-minded most Japanese are. If you compare their views with the comments posted by the Japan-based gaijin below, remarkable contrasts emerge. The gaijin (mostly American ex-pats) emerge as volatile and irascible vigilantes, proposing extreme solutions and taking the law into their own hands.
Sample answers to the question 'Should people use cell phones while driving?'
Japanese opinion: 'I know it is convenient to be able to call somebody when you get lost, but if you get hurt in an accident, you will regret it afterwards.' Gaijin opinion: 'If I see a car driver talking on his cell phone while I'm out on my motorcycle, I pull up very close to his window and rev the engine to 4,000 RPM. The noise drowns out their conversation and it drives them crazy. Isn't that fun or wot.'
Sample answers to the question 'How do you feel about men reading porn on trains?':
Japanese opinion: 'I wonder how the daughter of one of those dirty old men would feel if they saw their father reading such a magazine or newspaper on the train or wherever? He must be thinking of only his own gratification because he is lonely.' Gaijin opinion: 'The best way to handle those guys is to walk up to them, pull the magazine out of their hands and loudly ask them in Japanese which photograph is their favorite when they pull their johnson. Public shame works well in this culture from what I have seen.'
Sample answers to the question What do you think of bosozuku biker gangs?:
Japanese opinion: 'They sometimes get together near my house, but I'm not afraid of them because they haven't bothered me yet.' First Gaijin opinion: 'One easy tactic solves all your problems. When you see a line of them parked out in front of your local Lawson, place one firm kick to the center of the first bike, then run like hell. Good ol' Domino effect.' Second Gaijin opinion: 'After being woken up repeatly night after night by the noise I soon realized that the police and general population was ready to tolerate these punks... I decided to take matters into my own hands. I saved up some eggs and let them sit out in the sun on my balcony for a few days. Once I had a couple dozen ready to go I decided it was time to shut down the show. With the lights out and the noisy bastards coming down the road I let fly with the eggs from the 8th floor and couldnt stop laughing as a few of the eggs hit their targets and brought forth a barrage of foul language.'
Question: How can Japan preserve the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Japanese opinion: 'War is not only the A-bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. War is always happening somewhere in the world every day. If the media could report timely news with details such as the use of depleted uranium shells in Iraq, we would still be more aware of the present cruelty of war and human beings.' Gaijin opinion: 'You japanese should stop bitch whipping on every Aug. 06 et Aug. 14. All you deserved it.'
Question: Should porn be wrapped in plastic?
Japanese opinion: 'Even if the plastic bag is intended to prevent kids from looking at obscene materials, preventing them from learning about such things is even worse. Kids will find out about sex in the future anyway. We should teach sex education at an early stage.' Gaijin opinion: 'The only solution is to forget about the magazines, and to wrap anyone under 17 in plastic. This will also cut down on social diseases.'
Language represents the world, and therefore, like politicians, language inevitably betrays the world. Personally, I'm disturbed by labels, which always seem a kind of mini-betrayal. But I'm also disturbed when things don't have names. For instance, the male haircut (seen on a lot of contemporary dancers, for some reason) with 'something going on at the back' (no, not the mullet with 'a party at the back', I mean just some cute, fluffed, tufty stuff going on behind)? What do you call that? Or the baggy ass hipster jeans we've been seeing for the last couple of years, with their sagging, flat-bummed look, what are those called? I just saw a Wrangler poster featuring a pair, so I see they've made it into major manufacturers' lines. But the only word on the Wrangler poster was 'Wanted'. So tell me what you call these jeans? And how to describe my current look? Heimat Fisherman? Soldier Pierrot? Flip Spiv? When it comes to labels, I sometimes think 'the more the merrier'. That way we retain a bit of anarchy and stop any one label winning.
Browsing around clothes store Belleville the other day, I became totally absorbed in a photo book called Exactitudes. The book, by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, shows page after page of exaggeratedly conformist 'looks', each given a name and gridded twelve to a page. Ari and Ellie's aim was to point up the contradiction between individuality and uniformity by making 'an anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity'. Here are three 'Chairmen':
Here are three 'Musulmen':
Here are three 'Bonitas' (a familiar New York type):
Three 'Casual Queers':
And here are three of the only group I could find that seemed to include people who dressed like me: 'Vagabonds'!
One of the reasons I love regular features like Shift's Girls on the Street snaps is that it's so tempting to try to classify and generalize the looks on offer, and yet the attempt is doomed to failure. Looks are never as rigid as the 'Exactitudes' book makes them seem, and often, by the time you've found a word for a look, it's over. If naming and betrayal are closely related, naming can also be akin to killing. The most fascinating moment for a trend-spotter is somewhere between noticing a pattern emerging and knowing what to call it. As soon as a name is found and enters into common use, the look seems rubber-stamped, reproducible, conformist, commercial, ready to be flogged to death then filed away in some costume museum, ready for revival at some later date, primed for hybrids and irony.
Recently I've been enjoying another sort of street observation, more verbal than visual. Japan Today's regular Pop Vox feature (compiled by Sachie Kanda, it might as well be called 'Kanda Camera') links styles to opinions. Ordinary Japanese people are stopped on the street, photographed, and asked about topical issues. We get to see correlations between their looks and their views, between their objective presence in the world and their subjective reflections on it.
What strikes me is how sweet and sane, how tender and community-minded most Japanese are. If you compare their views with the comments posted by the Japan-based gaijin below, remarkable contrasts emerge. The gaijin (mostly American ex-pats) emerge as volatile and irascible vigilantes, proposing extreme solutions and taking the law into their own hands.
Sample answers to the question 'Should people use cell phones while driving?'
Japanese opinion: 'I know it is convenient to be able to call somebody when you get lost, but if you get hurt in an accident, you will regret it afterwards.' Gaijin opinion: 'If I see a car driver talking on his cell phone while I'm out on my motorcycle, I pull up very close to his window and rev the engine to 4,000 RPM. The noise drowns out their conversation and it drives them crazy. Isn't that fun or wot.'
Sample answers to the question 'How do you feel about men reading porn on trains?':
Japanese opinion: 'I wonder how the daughter of one of those dirty old men would feel if they saw their father reading such a magazine or newspaper on the train or wherever? He must be thinking of only his own gratification because he is lonely.' Gaijin opinion: 'The best way to handle those guys is to walk up to them, pull the magazine out of their hands and loudly ask them in Japanese which photograph is their favorite when they pull their johnson. Public shame works well in this culture from what I have seen.'
Sample answers to the question What do you think of bosozuku biker gangs?:
Japanese opinion: 'They sometimes get together near my house, but I'm not afraid of them because they haven't bothered me yet.' First Gaijin opinion: 'One easy tactic solves all your problems. When you see a line of them parked out in front of your local Lawson, place one firm kick to the center of the first bike, then run like hell. Good ol' Domino effect.' Second Gaijin opinion: 'After being woken up repeatly night after night by the noise I soon realized that the police and general population was ready to tolerate these punks... I decided to take matters into my own hands. I saved up some eggs and let them sit out in the sun on my balcony for a few days. Once I had a couple dozen ready to go I decided it was time to shut down the show. With the lights out and the noisy bastards coming down the road I let fly with the eggs from the 8th floor and couldnt stop laughing as a few of the eggs hit their targets and brought forth a barrage of foul language.'
Question: How can Japan preserve the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Japanese opinion: 'War is not only the A-bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. War is always happening somewhere in the world every day. If the media could report timely news with details such as the use of depleted uranium shells in Iraq, we would still be more aware of the present cruelty of war and human beings.' Gaijin opinion: 'You japanese should stop bitch whipping on every Aug. 06 et Aug. 14. All you deserved it.'
Question: Should porn be wrapped in plastic?
Japanese opinion: 'Even if the plastic bag is intended to prevent kids from looking at obscene materials, preventing them from learning about such things is even worse. Kids will find out about sex in the future anyway. We should teach sex education at an early stage.' Gaijin opinion: 'The only solution is to forget about the magazines, and to wrap anyone under 17 in plastic. This will also cut down on social diseases.'
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 11:16 am (UTC)Either way, the J-Today feature reminds me of The Onion (http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4049).
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 11:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 11:34 am (UTC)I won't make any claims about mainstream political discourse in Japan, but it feels like that kind of approach to problem solving has been greatly marginalized in the US.
I am genuinely curious as to how their answers would change, though. I bet the differences would be both informative and hilarious.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 11:35 am (UTC)Since many of those American 'opinions' are clearly Swiftian in their exaggeration, I don't think you can be too sure that the Japanese 'vox pops' really represent the people's views and are not simply expressions of the pressure to conform to a certain notion of the good citizen.
I'd be interested to know what you dislike about Japan, Momus. I mean, surely there must be some things you feel are better done in the West, since life and culture are rarely black and white affairs.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 11:42 am (UTC)I'm afraid everytime I see those trousers I will henceforth be thinking Gumby. If you're lucky, you could start a Hokkaido Gumby Boom come the New Year. I'll remember where I saw it first.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 12:04 pm (UTC)Or the baggy ass hipster jeans we've been seeing for the last couple of years, with their sagging, flat-bummed look, what are those called?
We call them "Penguin pants", on account of the way that they make the twits wearing them waddle about like penguins.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 12:05 pm (UTC)Re: your total distortion and selection of responses
Date: 2004-12-08 12:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 12:11 pm (UTC)I actually would like to see those Japan detractors (Japan Rage Victims, Vicious Circlists, Gasoline Firemen or whatever else we might like to call them) in pictures. I'm fascinated by the link between opinion and self-presentation.
Things I don't like about Japan? Hmm. I don't like the widespread cigarette smoking, the noise pollution, the celeb-comedy TV, J-pop, endless discussion panels and drunken dinners that go on until 3am. More gripes in Kyoto Grump radio (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2004/09/19/). But Japan is by far the least objectionable country I've ever been to. Foreigners who attack it infuriate me with their bad manners, especially when what they advocate would trigger a horrible series of vicious circles which would degrade Japanese civic life to something approaching American civic life. I agree with one Japanese poster to Pop Vox, who said (http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=popvox&id=411) to the rude gaijin assembled there:
'I'm writing to you all. When I wrote some days ago for my first time, I thought I was writing to normal people that participate in a normal Forum. But after reading some other threads, I noted that you people just like to spent your time criticizing Japan as if the country you belong to (emotionally, mentally or politically) were perfect. I'm very use to it, so not only I can stand it, but I laugh about it, and at the same I simply understand that your attitudes is a clear illustration of what you criticized to those Japanese civilians: you're 'racially supremist', as someone said, that does not let you think about how you are, and just makes you criticize how other are. I really think that your attitudes here show a clear behavior pattern, proper of a culture that never in history tolerate what was different to them.'
Re: your total distortion and selection of responses
Date: 2004-12-08 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 01:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 02:04 pm (UTC)--Newman the Snarky Gaijin
Re: gaijin
Date: 2004-12-08 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 03:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 03:44 pm (UTC)Questions
Date: 2004-12-08 04:16 pm (UTC)Is anonymously posting inflammatory remarks in online forums a uniquely Western phenomenon?
The American "cowboy" reputation is not entirely undeserved, but I don't think this qualifies as a good sociological study.
Re: your total distortion and selection of responses
Date: 2004-12-08 05:23 pm (UTC)'If these little boys who dress up like little girls tried to pull their noisy crap in the country I come from, they would probably find themselves dead real quick. You see, where I come from most people arn't afraid of their own shadow as they are here. It sickens me to see how easy it is to frighten the average Japanese male, and even more so the females. In MOST cases where a Japanese female is involved all you have to do is raise your voice to bring tears to their eyes. And the men... well I don't even want to get into that cuz the wife is sleeping and I don't think I'd be able to keep myself from laughing out loud.. Truly....JPNsucks... PS. Yep, lucky I'll be leaving here soon.'
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 05:36 pm (UTC)'At the beginning of Japanese history, the head of the imperial family was a woman named Himiko whom we know as Amaterau Omikami (Goddess of the Sun). It's time for a woman to ascend the throne again. They've got power. Women will rule the world in the future.'
Can you imagine a 49 year-old American saying that?
where is linnaeus when you need him?
Date: 2004-12-08 05:46 pm (UTC)if you haven't, you'd probably enjoy stuart ewen's writing.. i took a class with him a while back and we talked about stereotyping, naming systems, conventions, phrenology, etc. he's currently writing a book about all that went on during that class.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 05:52 pm (UTC)ps. You are rocking 'hobo chic', totally
pps. Do they make jeans that fit people with no ass? I don't think so. It is impossible to represent ass if you have none.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 05:58 pm (UTC)So, is semianonymously assholing it up in online forums a uniquely Western phenomenon? Does it seem likely that these same gaijins, photographed and interviewed by a Japanese person on the street, would give the same response they did in the darkness of thir own homes? It seems a bit like comparing 15th century love sonnets to early '90s dive bar pickup lines.
I would be very interested to see a study of Japanese online communities, and their level of random uncivilized assholism.
p.s. thanks to whoever changed my lj icon!
Re: gaijin
Date: 2004-12-08 06:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-12-08 06:03 pm (UTC)But I think I'm considerably less aware of this east/west polarity that you engage with time and time again. I don't think I'm interested in judging anyone according to their nationality. Are you? Surely you don't refuse to talk to any citizens of the U.S.A? Are you seriously more interested in race than
In fact, Momus, I believe that you're playing a clever game with us here, attempting to cajole 'us westeners' into saying that which would vindicate your ideas, hoping we'll utter a brutish "wrong, wrong!".
Well, "wrong, wrong, wrong!".
x